Fury Hell Hath No
by yamikinoko
Summary: .Kakashi x Sakura. Sakura is a smart, smart girl, but it's about time that she learned to accept her past and truly live.


**Disclaimer**: _I do not own __**Naruto**__. It is the property of __**Masashi Kishimoto**__; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement._

_

* * *

_

**Fury Hell Hath No**

_Heaven has no rage like love to fury turned_

_Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned._

"The Mourning Bride"

* * *

Sakura Haruno is known around Konoha as a bright, cheerful girl. Her vibrant pink hair and sparkling green eyes speak of life and _energy_ and an unbounded thirst for life but—

Sakura herself will tell you that though she is generally a happy person – enjoys her life – and may not know much in such areas, she is above all most familiar with two emotions.

The first of these is anger. The second is rejection.

She seems to spend the important parts of her life wavering between one and the other.

* * *

Her twelve year-old self had first experienced rejection when Sasuke left the village, left everyone and left _her_ to chase after a long lost dream of vengeance and power. It was the first time, and it _hurt_, _cut_ her like she would never be able to forget it, get over it.

First came the tears—flowing ceaselessly down her face, swelling her eyes and dizzying her head, until she was exhausted and needed to lie down (forever, it seemed, and never get up again.)

She was weak, then. _First came the tears_. But then came the rage.

And she wasn't weak anymore as she tore through several lands looking for him – _him_, her first love, first hate, first everything-really – and more often than not returned home exhausted, with nothing to show but aches and bruises and _hurt_—some she dispelled with a glowing finger.

Others, she couldn't reach if she dragged out her insides and set them on the operation table—a drippy, sloppy, gory mess.

Still, she pushed herself to get _better_, that unattainable state of being where one is supposed to be able to do things once impossible, but that state never comes (like sainthood, like nirvana) and Sakura continued to train and search and kill.

(Continues to hurt, without cure, without relief.)

When she finally caught him (not really—just saw him again for the first time in years), he is stronger, yes. But he is still Sasuke, with half-dead, disinterested looks, with eyes that look through her—

_Still_ look through her, as if nothing had changed, as if she were still silly little Sakura, more interested in hair and boys and makeup and _boys_ than her duty as shinobi.

Yes, there was rejection, then. But there was rage as well, swelling in disproportionate amounts until she fairly burned with it, nearly exploded with it.

There was nothing to say then, because everything had been said that she could say, and nothing more to say that couldn't be said without the impact of her fists against the unyielding earth, against the rigidity of the wall. He looked at her then, briefly, with something akin to interest in his eyes, as if she weren't the Sakura he knew (she wasn't).

But she no longer cared.

Instead, she imagined every fissure in the ground, the dirt, the wall, the _sky_ interposed themselves on that perfect, sneering face—there was rejection, yes.

But there was anger, and Sakura satisfied herself with that.

(She didn't see then, those fathomless eyes regarding her through the red haze of her vision, saw only bloody, crimson _anger_, and maybe a bit of _hate_.)

* * *

_Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan, I'm gonna get married! Can you believe it? Me! I'm getting married!_

She listened to that exuberant shout—she froze. She looked at his elated expression, that silly grin, as bright and _loud_ as his extravagant clothing—she despaired.

And then she cried.

Not just a few tears, rolling down her cheeks – not through happiness or well wishes – but sobs that racked her entire body, wails that attracted the attention of the entire street.

He was puzzled—he always was, when it came to her, and girls' emotions. He'd come to her looking for congratulations from a close teammate, a dear friend. She'd sent him flying with a fist to the face that held more strength than she'd used on him in—ever. And then she ran away.

Still crying.

How do you explain to someone that she didn't _like_-like Naruto, and she wasn't _jealous_ – not like that – but he was supposed to be in love with her, and around for forever and—

How do you explain to _rejection_ that she doesn't love Naruto that way, and that when he married, there would be a lot less time to spend with loud and stupid Naruto, because he would be spending it with someone else and—

Her childhood friends were drifting away from her, one by one, and leaving little Sakura behind, and Naruto was one of the last.

She waited for the anger to come, to dry away the tears, but there was no one to get angry at - she would apologize to Naruto, in time – if maybe only herself, for being so _unreasonable_, so _stupid_.

Naruto, oh Naruto, smarter than he looks, will invite her to the wedding, to meals – lunch and dinner – to family outings, and she will go to some of them, a few of them, and she won't exactly be unhappy until she got home, where the embarrassment and resignation would mob her once again as she looks at _that_ picture frame—looks and remembers how they used to spend most of every day, every week together.

Friends only belong to you a part of their time, but they are a part of your life forever.

(The picture frame still held their picture, like encasing in fragile, so-breakable dreams of a nearly-forsaken past.)

And Sakura knew that she hadn't lost him entirely, but he _was_ gone, and now she only had two left.

(She didn't feel then, the arm brushing hers through the numbness of her self-absorption, as she stood back – far, far back – in a long, long line of well-wishers and drowned in a world of happiness and her bitter core of despair.)

* * *

Sai doesn't say much to her anymore, she finds, and she presses closer to him to discover why, like a mystery, like a puzzle that must be solved. He always sits in his very clinical, immaculately clean apartment, and paints on an easel in the middle of the room. (The room is dry, just like him, but she doesn't say so, because he might kick her out of it.)

Her visits are usually repetitive—when she talks, Sai looks through her and sees his painting, and aside from the occasional snide comment, doesn't appear to notice her at all. (After a while, even those brief, unkind statements fade from their relationship altogether.)

It takes her a while to figure things out, and when she finally does (her, so-smart, so-genius Sakura), she is furious. Sai feels the dangerous spike of her chakra flaming in his little apartment and glances up, but only once. It is enough.

Sakura hurtles out of her seat and out of the apartment, and the satisfying crash that follows reminds her that she has forgotten to open the door. She doesn't care. He deserves it.

In _her_ apartment, there is a deep dent in the wall, a small pile of glass and wood splinters on the floor, and a mutilated scrap of paper that lies pitifully amongst the carnage. Sakura doesn't touch it, and in her mind, every shard begins to look like a corpse, long-dead, never buried.

She waits for the hurt to come, to temper the fury, but strangely enough, all she can feel is rage, and an overwhelming desire to hurt something, anything.

Nightfall finds her in the training grounds, still pounding tirelessly away at the wooden posts. Her hands and feet emit a dull ache that she vaguely registers, but mostly, she doesn't feel much of anything.

(She didn't hear then, through the ragged sobs of her gasps, the quiet intake of breath mingling with the rustle of leaves in the treetops, the quiet footsteps approaching cautiously through the sharp falcon's cry of her own pain.)

* * *

The first thing that begins to register is that he has never told her that she was being unreasonable, or that she was being silly, or immature. Instead, he stands by her and radiates a lack of accusation as hard as he possibly can. Perhaps it is because he understands loss, in a manner so extreme that she hopes to never experience.

But perhaps also he recognizes the tower of rage in which she encases herself and chooses (very wisely) not to upset her further. Neither speculation happens to be right.

She finds that, instead of annoyingly-loveably bright orange and bland (characteristically sharp) insults, there is the glaringly bright orange of porn and the familiar eye-crinkle over equally bland (characteristically gentle) teasing. Sakura begins to expect it, before she remembers that she is waiting for him to leave too.

(And maybe she still was, every time he fell silent, every time he looked off into the distance, as though scenting a future she couldn't perceive—couldn't fathom.)

* * *

The two of them avoid a certain corner of her living room as though there—there exists the Plague.

(And maybe there did, one of broken dreams, flavored with the essence of regret, and of _failure_ too.)

Sakura walks about her room with a pointed determination to ignore that little corner, and she does – mostly – and it doesn't exist, at least, everywhere but that consequent little corner in _her_ mind where all the grime of mistakes and the stupidity of _youth_ resided.

It was like a dead thing, and a _result_, until the day she stepped in that corner, and it became a _cause_—where it gave pain instead of merely reminded—

_This is ridiculous_, he says when he examines the cut, oozing red like the healing rawness of her heart, and though his words were admonishing, his hands are as gentle as his words, and as something else as something she couldn't identify, didn't know how to, _When are you going to look out of the past and realize that _this is it_?_

Sakura only rests her fingers to the cut and heals it, wiping it away cleanly with a burst of chakra. (If only her other hurts could be fixed in the same way.) She says nothing as he cleans up the glass, and only watches as he sets the mangled little piece of paper on the tabletop, thankfully face down. (If only her past could be forgotten as easily?)

She _sees_ the weary – resigned – look in his eyes as he goes about his task, the same way she _feels_ for the first time the way he brushes by her to toss the shards in the trash can, the same way she finally _hears_ that something in his voice that tells her that her other hurts _can_ be fixed, and her past should _not_ be forgotten, the same way he never forgot _his_, and _theirs_.

She doesn't live in the past anymore—leastways, not recently, and to prove this (to both of them, and maybe even just for him, or herself) Sakura reaches out and tastes – for the first time – the roughness of cloth against her tongue.

He still says nothing, but this may be because he has been there for a long, long time waiting for Sakura to finally _live_.

* * *

Sakura is still generally a happy person. And there is still anger. There is still rejection. But unlike before, Sakura knows a little more than when she didn't, and she, so-smart, so-genius Sakura _learns_.

And _lives_. (The way a human being should live, with all their _senses_, and all of their being.)

And when Sakura finally opens her eyes – and everything else – she realizes that this is it. _They_ are it—she never forgets this again.

(Doesn't need to, because her one constancy has never left, and never will.)

This is enough to keep the anger, and the rejection, at bay, long enough for her to _see_, _feel, hear_, _smell_, _taste_ once more. The photograph on her dresser seems less and less like a tombstone, more like a memorial.

Finally, her smile matches those of years and years ago, before the anger, and before the rejection.

Sakura is finally happy.

* * *

**A/N**: So from now on, I'm going to try answering all of my reviews. Hopefully that will actually work out. And I'm currently taking requests for fics—please see my profile for further details.


End file.
